Tears from the Moon
by The Drowned World
Summary: A first person POV songfic: Phoebe's pain at the end of the fourth season was never really shown in the show. How hard did she really break down after she was forced to kill Cole? WARNINGS: Slight season 4 spoilers; Phoebe/Cole ship; Angst. Oneshot.


A/N: I have no idea where this came from, really. I was watching the episode _The Three Faces of Phoebe_ and thinking about the Cole/Phoebe story (the best relationship in the show, damn it, and I was _so_ angry that they never got back together in the fifth season) when I thought that aside from the very end of _Long Live the Queen_ they never really showed how Phoebe must have felt.

I mean, she had just vanquished the love of her life and then lost her son in a two week span...she had to have been dealing with something harsh, but they never really showed that. I think that the fifth season was a fantastic season, but somehow the interactions between Phoebe and Cole made Phoebe seem completely different. She'd gone through Hell and back for this man, literally, and yet she never fought for them despite the fact that she _told_ him that she was still in love with him?

So I figured that I'd give them this - it takes place in between _Womb Raider_ and _Witch Way Now?_ and it is told through Phoebe's point of view on a rainy day after the death of the Seer (and thus her baby). It's not happy in the least, but I think it rings true with the characters, which is good.

**Disclaimer 1**: _Charmed_ is one of the three greatest supernatural shows of all time: Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel made up a golden age of television. It was created by Constance M. Burge and is owned by Paramount and the Spelling company. I make no money off of this and don't own the characters (but if I did Phoebe and Cole would still be together and Coop would have gotten his ass kicked in the end, damn it!).

**Disclaimer 2**: "Tears from the Moon" was performed by Conjure One (featuring Sinéad O'Connor) and was written by Billy Stein, I believe. It is on the _Conjure One_ CD as well as _Charmed: The Final Chapter_.

That should be about it - except for the annual fishing for reviews...

_Charmed_:

Tears from the Moon

Cole used to love the rain.

He had always loved poetry, anyway, but he never really waxed eloquent himself until the rain fell. Tears of the angels, he called it; tears of the Gods come to wash the earth of its sin until everything was pure and clean. He would throw back his head and laugh, stick his tongue out like a child and pull me outside, dancing until we were both soaked and shivering and could take comfort in each other, making love in a hot shower over and over again until we collapsed against each other on our bed.

Now I hate every single drop.

_Couldn't sleep_

_So I went out walking_

_Thinking about you_

_And hearing us talking_

_And all the things I should have said_

_Echo now, inside my head_

I could feel Piper and Paige's worried glances as I headed upstairs to my room as soon as the storm hit. I could imagine them calling to Leo and whispering to him that I wasn't _dealing with my issues_. Issues? My husband, my soul mate, the love of my life was taken over by the Source of All Evil, and I had to murder him while he stood in the confines of our crystal cage, watching me.

"I'll always love you," he'd said. It had made me want to drive a knife through my own heart, the look on his face. But still I'd finished the spell. Still I'd watched my lover and my greatest enemy explode in a fiery configuration of magical energies that even now, two weeks later, I can feel on my skin, crawling through my veins like worms.

And just thinking his _name_ in my head rips me apart, shatters my soul, sends me hurtling beyond the galaxies of pain I had been forced through at the death of Prue and into a new universe of suffering. Every night since _that night_ has been filled with nothing but agony, with unending dreams of the pure sweetness that was my love of Cole but then burned into a white-hot inferno at the memory of his face when I'd killed him. I can feel a little piece of my heart curling into ashes every morning when I wake up.

I'd always loved the legend of the Phoenix. But now I just thought that that symbol of hope, like so much of my life since becoming a witch, was pure bullshit. I would never rise from these ashes, never burn bright and pure and whole again as I once had.

Witchcraft. The Charmed Ones. I used to think of these proudly, used to feel a glow filling me when I would remember that I was a powerful good witch who had been chosen to protect the innocent. But what had being Charmed gotten me? Prue, my sister, my protector, was dead and buried in the ground after a demon named Shax had killed her. A water demon had murdered my mother before I'd even known her. I'd fallen in love with Cole and been dragged through Hell (literally) and back, briefly become evil myself and become the Queen of the Underworld, and then turned my back on him and killed him.

And my baby…

_I feel something falling from the sky_

_I'm so sad I made the angels cry_

_Tears from the Moon_

_Fall down like rain_

_I reach for you_

_I reach in vain_

_Tears from the Moon_

_Tears from the Moon_

Pain ripped through me in a region of my heart that I had not even yet allowed myself to inspect. Dealing with Cole was hard enough…but my _son_…

The Seer, of course, had foreseen my child. The Seer had foreseen everything, had engineered everything for herself, and as such had consigned my soul to burn in Hell. She'd tricked Cole into accepting the Hollow and thusly letting the Source take him over. She'd tricked me into killing the Wizard who would have taken the Source from Cole, saving him. She'd tricked me into becoming Cole's Queen, and then had forced me into taking her "tonic" which had only killed my child and turned him into the true Source of All Evil, a force which eventually proved too powerful for anyone to control.

So the Seer had taken my baby from me, and we, the glorious Charmed Ones, had managed to use that to kill what was once my son and with him the Seer and the entire Circle of Upper Demons of the Underworld. We had fulfilled our destiny: utterly destroyed the Source and the leaders of the Underworld and set evil tail- spinning backwards centuries in power.

So now I had murdered my husband and my son. Piper was likely unable to have children. Goddess, we'd suffered through so much. How can the Powers consider our victory a reward after everything they've put us through? I sit on my windowsill and draw my knees up to my chest and watch the rain slice through the air like bullets, like knives carving their way through my heart as each one hits the ground.

_It just ain't fair_

_This thing called loving_

_When one's still there_

_But the other feels nothing_

_I would have done anything for you_

_I still love you, baby, I adore you_

And still some part of me is happy that the Source of All Evil is dead, and that it was _us_ who vanquished him, for Prue and for Cole. But the real hell of the thing is that Cole was still in there, still loved me. It was why he had been unable to kill us for so long, why he had made me his Queen and had been so excited that I was pregnant. So no matter how much Leo and Piper tried to comfort me that I hadn't killed my husband, I knew that I had as surely as if I'd stabbed him in the heart while he was still human.

My mind always, always wanders to that day when I had summoned my Past and my Future selves to help me decide whether or not to marry Cole. I remember asking him if there was anything he wasn't telling me. I remember him saying no, and holding my so tight that I felt crushed to his strong chest. Safe. I wonder if it was the Source comforting me then, the Source who was in love with me because of Cole's soul, which was too strong for the Source to kill completely.

Why didn't Cole tell me? Didn't he know that I would have found a way to save him? Didn't he trust me?

I angrily dash the tears from my cheeks. I've cried enough in these past weeks to fill a river; I can't take it anymore. I'm empty now, dried up and bitter and useless to anyone.

_All day I keep from falling apart_

_But at night, when the sky gets dark_

_Tears from the Moon_

_Fall down like rain_

_I reach for you_

_I reach in vain_

_Stop!_

_Stop haunting me_

_It should be easy_

_As easy as when you stopped wanting me_

I throw myself suddenly to my feet and scream, scream so loud that I wonder if there is any Banshee left in me, because my throat is raw at the power behind it. "COLE! WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?!" I run to the dresser, where the picture of him stares at me mockingly. I throw it as hard as I can at the wall and watch it shatter into a thousand pieces. "I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!!" I scream, sobbing so hard that I feel like my bones have turned brittle, will break with the force of my pain.

"Why did you leave me?" I whisper brokenly, before I punch my mirror, hard, not wanting to see me in the reflection, alive and well while Cole and my happiness are both broken and burning in the Hell that we fell into.

"Phoebe!" Piper gasps as the door flies open, and I drop to my knees as the weight of the world, of my pain, falls upon my shoulders, breaking me as it has broken me again and again ever since I'd watched him die. Paige and Leo are behind her, and none of them say anything, just watch me curl up in agony and sob brokenly, holding myself as tight as a child.

They don't say anything, because there's nothing to say.

_Tears from the Moon_

_Fall down like rain_

_I reach for you_

_I reach in vain_

_Tears from the Moon_

_Fall down like rain_

_But tears from the Moon_

_Can't wash away the pain_

_Tears from the Moon_

_Tears from the Moon…_

I stare at the blood slowly oozing from my tightly clenched fist. It drips onto my floor, as my heart has done, as my soul has done. I know now that I'm done. No longer Charmed, no longer a witch. Just a broken woman. Just a broken girl. The rain stops falling outside as the Moon rises over this cursed city of false beauty and broken dreams.

Cole is gone. I have to find a way to make sure that I stay alive. For him. For my sisters. Eventually I'll pick up the pieces of that shattered mirror, I know. But the many reflections of myself I see are prophetic in themselves: it's going to take a long, long time to piece myself back together again.

_The End_.

A/N: This is a one-shot, but hopefully not the last thing I write for the Charmed universe. I just needed to get this out before I got back to my ongoing _Buffy_ fic. And then an Angel one I'm planning. Sigh.

I'd love reviews, but it'd be great if you just read it and agreed with me that they murdered the Cole/Phoebe pairing in the fifth season. They _did_. But, oh well - long live Charmed DVD's (except for the fact that Paramount DVD is so cheap that they only gave us special features on the final season and to do that they sacrificed the _THEME SONG_; how shitty can you get?!).

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read,

PyroPadawan.


End file.
